


'cause everybody has a poison heart

by orangesparks



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Child Abuse, F/F, F/M, Gen, Period Typical Slurs, rating for gore/violence/language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 01:46:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13400853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangesparks/pseuds/orangesparks
Summary: Beverly Marsh, her would-be gang, and the summer of 1989.(A Marsh gang AU.)





	'cause everybody has a poison heart

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](https://victor-criss.tumblr.com/post/166513239314/its-canon-now).
> 
> I did light research on juvenile court/detention centers in '80s Maine, but I'm sure I still fucked up mightily, so don't look to this as a primer course. 
> 
> (For my own sanity, we'll just say everyone's fifteen/sixteen here, if only because I don't see a bunch of sixteen-year-olds kowtowing to a thirteen-year-old, no matter how cool she is.)

_Maybe, he thought, there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for too, if that’s what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends._  
  
  
-Stephen King, IT  
  
  
  
  
  
_I just want to have something to do_  
_Tonight, tonight, tonight..._  
  
  
-The Ramones

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
They went shopping at Keene's today.

(Bev didn't consider it stealing. She considered it almost a public service.)

She insisted on only taking from designated places, ones she claimed could afford it. (Vic thought it awful convenient that many on her preferred Okay To Steal list just so happened to carry her favorite cigarette brands, but wisely never broached the subject.)

She'd saunter to the counter whenever there was a sole male clerk, let their eyes linger on her while she smiled, cheerfully thinking of how much she hated them all the while, and Vic and Belch pilfered behind her undetected, Winstons and bags of Levi Garrett chaw (Belch's new discovery, much to the consternation of the other two) and six-packs of 'Gansett and just about whatever the fuck else struck their hungry fancy.

It was so easy, Bev said, because men were stupid and cruel.

And Vic had asked, half-amused, half-angry, where in the hell she got off rattling off that shit, _stupid men_ this and _cruel men_ that, she hung around with two boys all the fucking time, didn't she, what did she think he and Belch were, a pair of girls, a pair of _spaniels?_ , and she'd fixed him with a long impatient look before saying, so soft and incredulous, "You're my _brothers_ ," as if that settled it, as if breathing it aloud simply made it true, and he'd held onto that feeling, the prideful heat flooding his veins, let the memory of it envelop him when he needed it to.

 

  
-

 

  
Derry was a Sundown Town and not the least bit shy about it.

The Neibolt Street Church School was predominantly black, Derry Junior-Senior High predominantly white. More diversity could be found on the shelves at Debby's Donuts than in either playground. If anyone tried to disrupt this unspoken balance (like, say, not having white skin, yet daring to purchase one of the nicer houses in town, the ones below West Broadway but above Lower Main Street), they would learn the hard way.

It was an open secret that Butch Bowers had been present the night the Hanlon place went down (Bruce Jagermeyer insisting once to Andy Criss at the 9th Street Tavern that he'd even used the smoldering wreckage to light his cigarette before ambling over to the Corcorans' to call the fire department).

It was also an open secret that Bowers continued to target what was left of the Hanlon family.

Nearly fifteen years ago, his wife had decided she'd rather not spend another night picking her teeth off the floor as penance for burning the pot roast and fled, taking her infant son with her. (When Elfrida Marsh stole away not six years later, her own child was not so lucky.)

Bowers was a favorite target of Bev's. He reminded her of her father, she said, so flippantly, and Vic's gut churned every time she did, no more emotion on her face or inflection in her voice than if she were discussing their latest social studies homework.

 _MURDERER_ and _RACIST_ and _WOMAN-BEATER_ appeared in bleeding orange letters on the side of his squad car. Tires were punctured like clockwork. Rocks shattered the windows of his farmhouse (leaping from a dizzying distance, as if assisted by a catapult, or perhaps a slingshot).

It only stopped when Mike Hanlon asked them to.

The three of them had been fooling around on the steps in front of Center Street Drug, smoking and shoving each other, when Hanlon approached on his delivery bicycle. Slowing to a stop, his wary expression hardened into something close to resolve.

He made eye contact with Bev.

"Can I talk to you?"

She waved a dismissive hand when Belch stood, knuckles flexing, and disappeared around the corner into the nearby alley with him for several long moments. When they returned, her face was ashen.

They were going to leave Bowers alone for now, she said-- not because he was an undeserving target - _definitely_ not the fucking case! - but because he had begun retaliating against Mike's grandfather. There had been surprise inspections, threats to shut down his farm for not abiding by rigid agriculture regulations that seemed to be unique to Derry.

("I'm so stupid for not thinking of that," Bev said, later that night, "God, all he does is take things out on people who can't fight back, of fucking course, I'm so _stupid_ \--")

Bev was furious, but Hanlon only looked tired. Clearing his throat, he slung a leg back over his bike - his deliveries were done, he said, so he'd better get back before his grandfather started hollering. Bev invited him to meet them at the Aladdin later (they were seeing some stupid new horror picture), but he declined.

He couldn't stomach that sort of thing, he said.

When his friends hopped into the Trans Am, Vic hung back, muttering to Hanlon, "Christ. It'll make her _happy_ , just come."

"And how are you all gonna get into that movie? Sneak in, right?"

Vic's shrug was answer enough. Hanlon stared at him.

"And what do you think would happen if we were to get picked up for not paying?"

"Thought you said you didn't--"

"I _don't_. But what do you think would happen? All four of us, sitting next to each other at the station. Think we'll be treated the same? By Borton? By Bowers?"

They jumped at a series of loud honks. Belch and Bev waved with friendly middle fingers.

It saved Vic the trouble of having to lie. When he whipped back around, Hanlon had pedaled away.

 

  
-

 

  
"Do you know," asked Andy Criss, "what happened the last time there was a gang in this town?"

It was a rhetorical question, had to be (Christ, there was a fucking _mural_ dedicated to the Bradleys in the alley next to Keene's Pharmacy, frozen smiles long faded by sun and rain and piss, painted corpses proudly on display like captured quarry), because Andy Criss liked to drink and Andy Criss liked to talk and there could be no more lethal a combination than when he'd recline on the last rickety barstool at the Spit 'N Whistle on 5th, waiting for someone to catch his eye, buy him a pitcher so he could truly let loose (though always omitting the bit where he clutched his chest and screamed, feverishly thinking he'd been pierced by a bullet rather than his own rabbity panic)--

Vic regarded his father - the bottle of Seagrams 7 clenched vice-tight between weathered fingers, the bloodshot haze his eyes had started their slow descent into - and carefully, ignored him.

 

  
-

 

  
One night in late September, Beverly Marsh introduced a porcelain toilet lid to the back of her father's skull.

It had been a long time coming.

("It's nothing," she used to say, if Vic or Belch's gazes rested too long on the latest colorful addition lacing her arms or scabby legs, "I'm clumsy as hell, you know that, I just need to be more careful on the fire escape--" or with the doorframe, or the just-mopped kitchen floor, never bothering to explain why the mottled blues and greens painting her skin were so often shaped like fingers).

No one wanted to hear it, of course; for to hear it would be to admit compliance, to admit apathy, that perhaps someone should have stepped in before things went quite that far.

They'd shipped her off to South Portland, to the Long Creek Youth Development Center. Nevermind the fancy name, everyone knew what it truly was - prison for kids.

Andy Criss had only snorted when he heard; a sort of self-satisfied sound, a non-verbal _well what do you know_ , as if it were inevitable, as if Bev were bad. As always, any protests from Vic fell on deaf ears.

"He hurts her, Dad, you know he does, he--"

"Al Marsh is a poor old working stiff, same as me and your ma. Pulling in all sorts of hellish hours at that hospital, and that girl repays him by smoking cigarettes and running wild--"

"It's not like she killed him. Hell! I wish she had!"

He slept on the porch that night.

 

  
-

 

  
Letters from Bev at Long Creek were as interesting and as personal as the nutritional squares on a cereal box.

They surely couldn't be from their friend. These were the clipped, neutered words of a business-like alien: _Hi, I'm doing fine_ (wasn't that a screamer) and _They've got a little TV in the rec room for us all to watch if we're good_ (the most riveting part, all downhill from here) and _Hope you're doing okay at school_ (like she had ever given a good goddamn about school a day in her life).

Belch laughed aloud the first time they received one; said it reminded him of the ones his father had sent when he'd been stationed in Libya. "S'pose the government isn't real fond of people bitchin' about what they're doing - guess the same goes for kiddie prison."

No visitors under eighteen were allowed. Still, Vic and Belch made the drive down to South Portland more than once, parking at a comfortable distance and sharing a six-pack, watching the sun dip behind those chainlinks clawing around miles of brick.

 

  
-

 

  
In January, Ida Desjardin asked Al Marsh to appeal on her niece's behalf in Juvenile Court. Ideally, Bev's sentence would be shortened, and thus, she could finish up the school year in Derry. In return, Ida would refrain from asking her lawyer friend in Castle Rock to sue the ever-living shit out of him.

The charges thrown at Bev had been laughable in the first place - _assault and battery_ (of all the fucking irony), _disorderly conduct_ , and _promiscuity_ , most of fucking all - as if Bev didn't slide the lit end of her cigarette down the hand of any boy who tried anything; as if she hadn't started shying away from the most innocuous of touches from even her own dear friends in the past year, freezing up even at an arm slung around her shoulder, until she slowly relaxed and responded with the soft clasp of her hand over theirs, locking their fingers together.

Good behavior and her father's testimony had been enough to spring her.

Al Marsh slunk away to Bangor to stay with his brother, and Ida temporarily claimed the now-vacant apartment on Lower Main Street - cheaper than renting from the Derry Town House for a few months, after all. Bev was ecstatic, calling her friends the instant she got home.

They picked her up and cruised until dawn.

 

  
-

 

  
Bev returned to school with an even worse reputation and a new haircut. That streaming copper hair had been shorn down to almost nothing, save for a few pieces that fell into her eyes, stray curls tickling the back of her neck and the tips of her ears.

Victor had expected the other girls to draw blood, maybe to seize what they might perceive to be low-hanging fruit. But they backed away from her, now, parted the hallways like the Red fucking Sea - not out of fear, but something like reverence, whispers of _tramp!_ and _dyke!_ and _trash!_ replaced near overnight with _fucked him right up!_ and _her own father!_ and - this last one almost gleeful - _did you hear? her bare hands!,_ Gretta Keene of all people suddenly silent when Bev passed her in the halls; Keene, who cracked her gum like a truckstop waitress and drowned herself daily in some horrible sugary perfume ("It's Debbie Gibson's signature scent," he'd once heard her bragging to Sally Mueller as he staggered past, gagging on a whiff of the offending odor, wondering why Gibson had not sold the formula to some biological weapon manufacturer and made herself a small fortune). Keene, who'd made it her mission to steal Bev away.

He came across them behind the bleachers one day, Bev with one slim, scarred hand curled tightly around the other girl's shoulder (Keene, who was always first and loudest of all the girls to call Bev _whore_ and _slut_ and _gutter-skank!_ ); Bev's face coldly furious, rubbing slow soothing circles through the starched shoulder of Keene's acid-washed jacket and murmuring softly, reassuringly, as turquoise eyeshadow and sparkly slate mascara ran down her cheeks in technicolor rivulets, turning her usual Samantha Fox wannabe self into a not half-bad Nina Hagen impersonator. And when she realized he was lingering nearby and snapped, "What the fuck are you looking at, you little shit?" through neon raccooned eyes, instead of telling the other girl just where she could stick her nasty little West Broadway attitude, Bev had only looked up at him imploringly - _Please, Vic,_ that look begged, _please leave,_ as if _he_ were the one who didn't fucking belong, _Christ_.

Though Bev refused to tell him just what Keene had been so sore about, Vic had a good idea. Because only one thing could make Bev so incensed, so hell-for-leather livid.

He'd later heard whispers of Calvin Clark, the boy Gretta'd been going with the better part of a year, having a nasty accident in the parking lot near Keene's, the hockey girls sneering and baring perfect white canines at him in the hallways, Clark himself scampering like a terrified rodent whenever Bev or Gretta crossed his path. His suspicions must have been more clear than he realized, for one day Bev cornered him after class, at their usual smoking spot behind the multi-purpose room.

"You won't tell," she said rather than asked, offering him a Winston and then lighting up herself, two on a match, and instead of demanding to know why, exactly, she wouldn't tell him (her very own best fucking friend), he'd only half-shrugged, as if it were something he'd already mostly forgotten.

"Course I won't." And hell, he'd meant it. Always did.  
  
  
  
  
-  
  
  
  
  
The Esty county fair was in town early this year.

Vic had fond memories of the last one, eating fried dough and winning each other stupid prizes off the carny games, Bev and Belch and himself tuna-tin-tight and knees pressed together in the little spookhouse cart, the _clack! clack! clack!_ as groaning chains dragged it along, Bev letting loose an excited scream when the giant spider dropped from the ceiling.

"If you think I'm sitting with either of _you_ ," Gretta had sneered at him and Belch, and just like that, she'd laid claim to Bev for the entire night, squeezed next to her on each and every clinkily dangerous carnival ride, strolling together on the midway with arms linked, blinking neon lights rainbowing over heads of copper red and bright blonde, bent close together, whispering, Bev's face pressed into the space between Gretta's shoulder and neck, the familiar way she'd always pressed into his.

Calliope music haunted the midway. It was sort of giving him a headache. Bev offered him some of her fudge, but he had to decline - it would cling to his braces, a bitch to get out. ("Too bad," Gretta cooed, oozing a saccharine frown that suggested mockery rather than sympathy.)

 

  
-

 

  
A gold necklace rested prettily on Bev's collarbone, now - real gold, not fake gold like she always got from the counter at the Five 'n Dime. It spelled her full name in elegant curling letters.

("She only likes her 'cause she buys her things," Vic insisted to Belch's vehement nods, feeling guilty for it immediately after.)

 

  
-

 

  
Peter Gordon crawled naked toward them over a long stretch of gravel.

" _Hell_ ," he said, smiling winsomely, as if he were engaging in a Sunday tea party instead of a series of increasingly degrading acts for their amusement ( _their_ being Victor's and Belch's and Gretta's), "I'm joining the Alpha Ros when I go to Bowdoin, may as well get practice in now, right?", _hey now if YOU idiots could do it!_ lingering proudly beneath his words, that cheerful devil-may-care tone, and Vic and Belch simply grinned and kicked him back down when he raised his torso too high, assisted by one scuffed Derry Army Surplus combat boot and one grass-stained Brooks, let him keep crawling and crawling and crawling until his elbows and knees and palms bled.

(There had been, of course, no initiation for the rest of them. But he didn't need to know that.)

Vic himself had no real feelings either way on Peter Gordon. He was a decent enough first baseman, and, whenever he wasn't bragging about his Audi (or its Bosch KE-Jetronic fuel injection), not especially annoying.

Gretta didn't share his sentiments.

"He'll never make it," she said flatly. She watched with the level of scornful interest one might spare a dying insect. "He's used to getting everything easy. He's gonna run the instant he realizes his daddy can't just buy him in," so fucking _contemptful_ , as if she weren't just as disgustingly rich, didn't live on the same well-manicured West Broadway cul-de-sac as he did.

How annoyed she must have been, then, that all this humiliation only seemed to work in Peter's favor, at least when it came to Bev, whose disdain of men - of boys - in general was well-documented. Her face had only been coolly amused when she finally arrived at Belch's ("We have a _surprise_ for you," Gretta had chirruped into Mrs. Huggins' kitchen phone), and crawling across the jagged driveway towards her was none other than West Broadway golden boy Peter Gordon, grinning bloodily (lips and chin still raw from the gourmet cocktail of hot-sauce-and-toilet-water they'd forced him to chug a gallon of), as if awaiting her verdict.

Humility in boys is so rare, Bev said.

 

  
-

 

  
It must have chafed at Peter to be followed by none other than his own simpering girlfriend, Marcia Fadden, no more than two weeks later; Marcia, who suffered no similar humiliations and was admitted entrance simply by having Gretta's ear and Gretta having Bev's.

"All these rich bitches," Belch muttered to Vic. "We're outnumbered. Soon she's gonna ditch us for them." It was meant to be a joke, but fell too flat, too petulant, to truly sound like one.

"She fucking won't, so shut up," said Vic. He refused to voice his own trembling agreement, the way he'd watched Bev watching the hockey and drill team and cheerleader girls with something like envy and longing all these years, as if a simple "Hey, Marsh, come join us!" bleated from their perfect pink mouths would be enough to draw her from the Trans Am, sprinting towards the field, not sparing another look back for him or Belch, her _placeholder_ friends.

"Hell, Vic! I was kidding," said Belch, chortling. "Course she won't." He looked so content again already, so reassured. Vic didn't try to contradict him.

 

  
-

 

  
After Marcia came Sally Mueller.

Nothing could be odder than that pack of prim proper _laydee_ -like girls suddenly trailing behind Bev in the hallways, Gretta all bedazzled acid wash, Marcia a fuzzy pastel nightmare, and Sally some bizarre mixture of Stevie Nicks sea-witch and little girl frilly. They formed a strange coven with Bev, with her scant collection of homemade dresses (from both McCall's patterns and designs of her very own) and second-hand combat boots and Levi's shedding denim.

(If someone had told Vic last semester that West Broadway's brightest and bitchiest would be looking to Bev for guidance and leadership - like she were the lovechild of Madonna and Princess Diana, or something - he'd want to know what they were lacing their pot with.)

All three had been newly discovering rather creative uses for their 24 karat gold rings, gemstones lined up gleaming and vicious on their knuckles, just waiting for the slightest provocation, the flimsiest excuse, to use them. They crowded Bev with excited stories of their latest victims and clouded her with musky body spray; shared inside jokes in the girls' rooms, locker rooms, places Vic and Belch couldn't go, weren't welcome.

It was Gretta, of course, who insisted it was _time for a sleepover_ , her Estee Lauder smile feral. To celebrate Sally's induction, she said; then, winking at Bev, her tone cloying, almost pitying: "And you've probably never been to a _real_ sleepover before, stuck so long with..." trailing off ominously, as if the thought of Bev's friend pool before her own glittered addition was too horrific to bear, let alone speak of.

But Bev _had_ been to sleepovers before (in those early days, before her dad caught wise that the constant litany of _I'm going out with Ronnie Grogan and Betty Ripsom_ actually meant _I'm going out with Victor Criss and Reginald Huggins_ ). It was easy for latchkey kids to pull a fast one on their parents, and so they had spent many late nights camped in the Huggins rec room, the latest Night Flight droning comfortably in the background as they snuck cigarettes and tried to teach themselves poker.

There were also quieter nights; nights when Bev crawled into Vic's window after a particularly bad time with her dad, and he'd pretended it meant something other than the fact that he lived closer to her than Belch did. Squirrelling away cold cuts and Lays potato chips from the kitchen, they'd reclined on his bed, having those conversations that only seemed to make sense between one and two a.m., and then she'd slip back before her dad could discover her missing.

"What time should we come over?" asked Peter. Gretta eyed him with open disdain.

"It's a _girls' night_ ," she said, slowly. "So, _never_." Sally giggled. Even Bev cracked a smile.

With the girls held hostage at Gretta's, the rest of them ended up passing out in the Gordon family game room well before midnight. Beer cans littered the plush white carpets. The ball game hummed on the TV, ignored.

(" _Sexism_ , is what it is," Peter had said when they were all still awake, still sore over such an injustice, Vic and Belch nodding their drunken mulish agreement).

 

  
-

 

  
Derry Community Park had grown quieter since the disappearances.

Three of them collapsed on a bench, watching the sun fade behind Paul Bunyan, leering from his cement perch. The voices of townsfolk lessened gradually to a murmur as it became full dark.

And then, they were alone entirely.

Bev, finished with her pack of Winstons, asked for another smoke. Vic rifled in his pocket, came up triumphant with a slightly crushed Marlboro; felt the smooth skin of her palm as he passed to her.

Before he could hunt for his lighter, Patrick Hockstetter was there (was _always_ there these days, a lamprey with a shitty haircut), flame dancing from the chipped lighter clutched between spindly fingers, hovering close, some fucking hunchback manservant from a Peter Lorre movie or something. Waiting to light her cigarette.

She let him.

Patrick didn't move when she exhaled a moment later - seemed to fucking _savor_ it, breathed in deep, rapture evident on his bony face, eyes red and watery. The creep didn't smoke himself, but he sure fucking zoomed to Bev's side whenever she was about to light up; maybe even would have tried to fucking suck the rest of the smoke from her lungs if she hadn't already leaned back, tilted her head to take another drag.

Hockstetter was the newest addition to their gang. Until recently, he'd been a loner at Derry - a status that Vic felt quite fitting, even necessary.

_(rabid dogs didn't hang in packs, did they)_

But something had happened, and suddenly he was always at Bev's elbow, a greasy shadow, the spoiled milk sheen of his too-white face almost _glowing_ every time she engaged in casual violence around him.

None of the girls at school were particularly fond of the freak, and Bev was certainly no exception. So why was it, Vic wondered, that one, she stopped extinguishing her cigarettes on the creepshow's hand whenever he lingered too close, and two, she allowed him admittance into the Trans Am?

It was the one and only time he had seen Gretta yell at Bev after (as in After Long Creek After Bev's Liberation After Bev and Gretta became Bev&Gretta, so infuriatingly entwined), falling into an honest-to-God temper tantrum like the poor little rich girl she was, sentences blurring together in her rage ( _You know what he did, to me, to Sally, to the others, shit! - you know what he did to you-_ ), Bev's reply, calm and patient ( _He won't anymore_ ), Gretta's, red-eyed, almost hysterical ( _What, he just-- promised you? swore on his fucking pencil case?_ ), followed by a hard-edged laugh, then icy silence after they both stormed away.

Gretta Keene was many things, but she was not a crier. Which was why her tremulous voice, the sheer _betrayal_ in it, had been enough to make Vic feel a lurch of pity, no matter his personal feelings on her or the vicious delight she took in trying to embarrass him in front of Bev on a near daily basis.

If it drew similar sympathy in Bev, one wouldn't know it. For Hockstetter didn't budge from his place in the car all week, and Gretta refused to speak to any of them through it all, pretending they didn't exist and sitting with the underclass hockey girls at lunch.

Yet astonishingly, true to Bev's word, Hockstetter _didn't_ \--

(didn't _what_ , exactly? Victor was lucky, had no firsthand experience)

not even to Marcia or Sally, surely easy enough prey those days they warily found themselves pressed next to him in the backseat.

This offered Vic little comfort.

Because Hockstetter hadn't changed, not really. He gave, rather, the impression of a well-heeled dog, waiting for its master's command to strike. As if he knew that lapsing into his old routine while in her presence would cause Bev to throw him out as easily as he'd sauntered in.

By the end of the week, Bev and Gretta evidently came to a stalemate of sorts, for following that, Hockstetter only lurked in the backseat when Gretta herself wasn't present (and those days ended up far and few between, thank fucking God).

If she didn't consider him so beneath her, condescended to ever take his advice, he could have spared her some misery. After all, the most surefire way to ascertain that Bev would do something was to tell her not to, and if she'd had been hanging around as long as Vic had, surely Gretta'd know this, too.

 

  
-

 

  
Vic had been shuffling out of after-school detention (that miserable bastard Darnell serving as monitor, _again_ ) when he heard the frustrated scream from down the hallway.

He hesitated, then let curiosity get the better of him.

A blonde girl was cursing up a storm, struggling with something he couldn't see, her canvas gym duffel collapsed at her feet. Even with her back to him, he knew it was Gretta. But the locker hanging open in front of her wasn't filled with the glossy Teen Beat posters her own was. It was instead plain, bare and suspiciously tidy. It looked, rather, a lot like Hockstetter's.

He stepped closer.

She was wrestling with a fairly large bag, trying to squeeze it into the locker, muttering to herself like a lunatic all the while. It was made of a clear kind of plastic, giving him a decent view of its insides. At first, he thought it was stuffed with some kind of leftover rice, until he noticed it writhing:

Maggots.

(Rat-tailed maggots, to be precise.)

On those days Andy Criss remembered he had a son and supposed they should do generic father-son things like fish or hunt or discuss which local politicians were secret commies, Vic had seen more than his fair share of squirming bait. But the image of _Gretta_ , in all her acid-washed and rhinestoned glory, storming into a bait and tackle shop to buy a locker's worth of maggots was too fucking priceless to resist.

He could almost hear her reasoning, mostly because he had the feeling it matched his own--

_\--he likes flies, doesn't he, so why not give him something even better, this should be his fucking equivalent of a box full of puppies, happy early fucking birthday and Christmas to you, you fucking creep--_

She scowled when she noticed him.

"Tell her, and you'll be choking on my manicure for a week."

Vic shrugged. Fluorescent overheads glinted off his braces, sharpening his smile.

"Want help?"

 

  
-

 

  
Hockstetter, as it turned out, had no discernible reaction to finding his locker stuffed with maggots - or, at least, not one worthy of noting. Either a custodian had been alerted to the smell over the weekend, or Hockstetter himself had arrived to school earlier than the rest of them and proved himself a speedy maid.

He offered Vic his usual gormless smile when he made a point of strolling past his locker to gawk before the first bell, disappointed to find it spotless inside as ever.

("That _asshole_ , he probably saved them for lunch," Gretta said bitterly, and he'd cackled his agreement.)

 

  
-

 

  
"Here comes the Wild fuckin' Bunch, led by Orphan Annie Oakley." This laugh riot came courtesy of Four-Eyes Tozier, muttering to Urine-Uris when they passed them in the halls one afternoon.

Of course they all heard him. His _sotto voce_ tended to be more _sotto shout_.

And maybe he hadn't been thinking before speaking - he tended to not - but Bev, who sometimes laughed at the little fuckface's "impressions" when in a lighter mood (proof if Vic ever needed it that nobody, truly, was perfect), seemed to wilt, almost, instead of volleying back an insult like usual. Belatedly, he made the connection between the shift in her posture and the word _orphan_ , whirling around to slam Tozier into a row of lockers. A terrified yelp escaped the other boy, his stupid glasses skittering to the floor.

Before he could retrieve them, Sally stepped forward, offered a delicate smile, and slowly lowered a lavender jelly sandal until they all heard the answering crunch of glass and plastic. Hockstetter lingered, dripping a fat loogey onto what remained of the lenses.

They continued on their way.

("You need to watch it," said Uris, once they were safely out of non-pulverizing range. "Eight versus one aren't exactly the best odds." Tozier snorted.

"They're like fucking Jehovah's Witnesses. Recruiting every day. Maybe they'll let us in by the end of summer.")

 

  
-

 

  
It was a balmy Sunday night in the park, Hockstetter thankfully absent for once (with his parents at St. Joseph's evening service, of all the fucking places!), when Gretta demanded: "Why does she let him near her?"

(She wasn't the first to ask. She wouldn't be the last.)

Sally was teaching Bev how to blow a perfect smoke ring, their berry and pink lip stains blending on the filter of the Winston they passed back and forth. Belch watched with amusement, his own cigarette dangling from the corner his mouth.

Maybe Bev would admit it if confronted, more likely not (but surely, never, ever while in the presence of Hockstetter himself), but Vic felt he was starting to get the idea.

Teachers were scared of Bev, yes, especially after the incident with her father, _especially_ the male teachers (to her supreme satisfaction), but still not so afraid they wouldn't _discipline_ her, throw her in detention or even threaten suspension if they wanted to attempt to get her in line, put her in her place--

Hockstetter was a different story.

He filled unwanted spaces like water, indifferent and unyielding. Rules that applied to other kids didn't to him - not because he was especially stealthy (although he could be), not because he was smart (although he clearly was, loath as Vic was to admit it), but because there was something about him, something in that vacant seagreen stare, that paralyzed adults, made them look the other way, letting him ditty-bop along on his merry fucking way so long as _they_ didn't have to deal with it.

Of course Bev would find that kind of invisibility useful.

 

-

 

  
Hockstetter disappeared sometime in the middle of June.

Vic was surprised at how hard Bev seemed to take it, almost like a personal insult. It made no fucking sense; he had been her guard dog, nothing more, but when Belch told them weeks later that Mr. Hockstetter had no new information on his son's whereabouts, Bev had scoffed, unsurprised and furious: "As if _he_ fucking cares."

The latest Xeroxed face gracing telephone poles and milk cartons was little Eddie Corcoran's. They were at Gretta's when Bev informed them, to Sally's murmurs of _such a shame!_ , Peter's sympathetic grunts, this revolving door of missing children no more remarkable than the spurt of unseasonably cool weather they'd been having (perhaps less). They were ready to move onto the next topic of conversation - which cars they'd take to the Starlite Drive-In down in Castle Rock for their fireworks show - likely the Trans Am and Gretta's new M3, though they'd catch hell from her if they dared spill any soda or beer in the latter; which double-feature sounded better, the horrors or the comedies - when Bev snatched the movie listings from Sally's lap, crumpling it, saying something needed to be done and they ought to be the ones to do it.

" _What?_ Why?" demanded Marcia.

"Yeah, not like it's our problem," said Belch.

"It already is your problem, you're all just too fucking stupid to know it," Bev snapped.

Marcia's mouth fell open like she'd been slapped. Peter sat alert, eyes darting between Bev and Marcia nervously, chewing his lip, contemplating a retort, then slumped a little, shifted his gaze, like he'd already envisioned how _that_ would end and thought better of it.

"Do you think," Bev continued, deadly quiet, "we've escaped this so far because we're smarter than those other kids? Because we're better, or something? No. It's because we've all been lucky. Sorry, but I don't think that's anything to brag about."

Vic waited for Gretta, who surely liked being called stupid no more than the rest of them, to start firing back insults of her own. But no, there she sat next to Bev on her giant canopied bed, fucking _nodding_ (sagely, like a Greek philosopher or some shit), as if she'd been saying the same thing all along instead of the one who'd unsuccessfully tried switching to the subject of the drive-in in the first place.

"Bev's right," she said, glaring first at Marcia, then Belch, slowly scanning the room and landing on the rest of them with her seafoam sparkle-lined stare, daring them to argue, "we've just been _lucky_ ," digging matching nails into the crook of Bev's arm, a snake coiling to strike.

 

  
-

 

  
Between them, they had:

a battered Bullseye slingshot (Bev's); eight baseball bats, six wooden and two aluminum (one Vic's and two Belch's and the rest Peter's); four hockey sticks (Gretta's and Sally's, equally); three cheer batons (Marcia's). An assortment of catcher's masks, helmets, chest protectors, shin guards, goggles and gloves circled them inside Gretta's trunk, a nest of plastic and polyester.

"This is a weird fucking game," said Belch. Sally murmured agreement.

"It's not a game," said Vic. He hated that it wasn't.

 

  
-

 

  
About three weeks ago, Vic had been half-asleep on the couch when he heard a car pull into his driveway. Headlights glared through the window, washing him in pale light, startling him fully awake.

It honked twice.

He glanced at his father, dozing in the armchair next to him. He didn't stir. His mother was in bed, had gone down hours ago.

He knew instantly it wasn't Belch. Not only was he smart enough to not honk outside Vic's (not if he didn't want a lecture from Andy Criss on the decay of this current generation, at least, and certainly not past fucking  _midnight_ ), but the Trans Am's horn had a different tone to it.

This sounded louder, angrier. The kind one might hear on a locomotive seconds away from mowing you down.

Vic wandered to the window, batted away yellowed blinds, and froze.

Idling in the driveway, bathed in shadow except for traces of street lamp catching along its jutting chrome fins, sat a '58 Plymouth Fury. The last person in town Vic had known with a car like that had been his brother, Len.

All fine and all dandy, perhaps, if he hadn't died six years ago in it.

Something tugged at him, willed him to the door. Half-hypnotized, he swung it open. The engine purred loudly, its driver a mystery silhouette, waiting for him to stroll out. _Let's ride._

A hand curled around the steering wheel, tapping impatiently, and clouds shifted just enough to spare it a sliver of moonlight, reveal its unnatural palor, the sick white of embalmed flesh.

_(let's ride let's ride let's ride let's--)_

He took a step, then another, and another, before a hand latched onto his shoulder and he shouted, stumbling. Twisting around, he saw the unamused face of his father, voice rough with sleep: "What in hell are you doing?"

"The car," said Vic. He blinked, shivering, as if he'd just woken up himself. He turned, but the car was already gone. The oddest part was he knew it would be.

 

  
-

 

  
He didn't know what Bev had seen. If she wanted to tell him, she would. He wouldn't make her relive it. She'd done too much of that already.

"If I'm wrong," she said, "then you can all say I'm crazy. Long Creek broke Bevvie Marsh forever, time to throw her right the hell back in. I'll leave my tape collection to you guys, just give my love to my aunt."

Unsmiling, he finished strapping Peter's chest protector behind her waist.

"Great present. Your tapes fucking suck."

She hit him.

 

  
-

 

  
Bev didn't like knives and she liked guns even less (one wondered if this philosophy was inspired by Derry Town Square on a certain sunny day back in 1959, most of their fathers present as bullets tore through flesh, jagged screams painting the air), but she could turn anything into slingshot ammo (when in a playful mood: scented erasers, gummy bears, torn-up dandelion heads; when not: heavy rocks), and Belch's Weekly Shopper sling danced around her waist as she strolled through the sewers with her slingshot aloft, rocks muffled by the canvas, their muted rattling like a distant storm.

The other didn't look afraid, either. If anything, they looked in their fucking element.

Marcia carried two gleaming metal batons at waist-level, a turquoise-eyelidded gunslinger. Gretta and Sally raised their hockey sticks, backs to one another as they moved in synchronized grace. Belch and Peter steadied their bats with sweaty hands, faces grim.

It was something worth marveling over, especially when he knew that nobody wanted to be here. But Bev would have gone whether or not they followed. That was the only reason he'd come. And he knew he wasn't alone.

In the distance, they heard it: the shriek of a child, wet and bleating. They stiffened at the sound, then breathed out, almost a collective sigh, moving steadily.

Vic gripped his bat tighter.

 

 

-

 

  
The pimply teen employee flashed his lantern over the moving blanket that was Sally in the back of Peter's Audi, demanding they pony up the full price of admission - it was _per head now, not per car_ , he chided.

("That ungrateful _cretin_. Doesn't he know we saved him?" Marcia hissed, once they'd pulled away.)

They'd missed most of _Weekend at Bernie's_. Despite choosing the comedies over the horrors, it seemed they still couldn't escape the latter; the concept of two losers puppeting around a sunglasses-wearing corpse had lost whatever perverted charm it might have held previously.

They had settled on taking all three cars.

Marcia and Peter fell mercifully quiet for once, busy necking inside the Audi. Ronnie James Dio and Lindsey Buckingham sang a static-y, bracing duet as Belch and Sally battled for control of the Trans Am's radio. They preferred making up their own dialogue for most movies, a habit that annoyed everybody else - though of course, Vic was the only one currently being tortured by it. He ignored the thought of Bev and Gretta curled up alone together in that shiny M3. He hadn't chugged enough shitty beer to succumb to blissful ignorance just yet.

He slouched in the backseat, staring dolefully out the open roof at the surrounding woods. Sucking down the last warm dregs of Busch, he crumpled the can, let it fall. Even if there had been the right dialogue to chuckle at (although Sally seemed to find the falsetto Belch used for each and every character perfectly hilarious), he couldn't concentrate. Fucking pitiful.

He kept seeing his brother's dead gummy grin, stitches zig-zagging his face and neck like rigid snakes, Brian Setzer pompadour and battered leather jacket turning him into MTV's answer to _I Was A Teenage Frankenstein_ ; the fucking _Blob itself_ (Peter had balked the most at this), severed human limbs jostling merrily inside shifting pink gelatin, a water balloon filled with raw meat; Bev's father, with that humorless smile and scarecrow's posture, eyes crinkled knowingly as he looked at her, an unasked question overwhelming - _fouling_ up - the air around them more than the stink of the sewers themselves

_(are you still my)_

Bev's face, tight with fury as she fired a rock between his

_(its)_

eyes and sent the thing pretending to be him back to hell or wherever the fuck it came from--

"I'm getting popcorn," he told Belch and Sally.

He got twin grunts for his troubles. He could have told them he was running for Congress and received no more illuminating a response.

The concession stand was nearly empty; most people were too busy laughing their heads off at Andrew McCarthy's antics. He bought the smallest tub of popcorn they had and ate most of it before he even got outside. Half-sated, he lit up a Winston and froze.

Bev and Gretta were leaning against a nearby picnic table, Gretta's head nestled between Bev's neck and shoulder. Christ. Didn't they have a brand-new car to be in, blessedly out of his view? (A car that Vic could afford, maybe, in another twenty years, after selling copious amounts of his own blood?)

"C'mere," said Bev.

He lingered, more sour than he had a right to be, at the edge of the table. Shooting him an exasperated look, she reached out and caught the sleeve of his jacket, pulling until he was flush against her other side.

Callused fingertips grazed his cheek; she leaned up on tiptoe, darting a tender kiss to the corner of his jaw. The rust-red of her lipbalm smeared when she pulled away, a sticky bruise.

"I'd have died without you guys," she whispered. "You know that, right?"

Gretta snorted. She sent Vic an affectionate eyeroll over the top of Bev's head as she elbowed her, gently. "Duh."

_Like we'd let you ditch us that easy._


End file.
